Sina Weibo to launch native app for BlackBerry 10

During BlackBerry Jam Asia, it was announced that Sina Weibo would be soon be available for the BlackBerry 10 platform in the coming days. If you're not familiar with the service, it's a micro blogging platform similar to that of Twitter and Facebook and is one of the most popular websites in China with over 100 million posts daily happening on the site capturing around 30% of all internet users.

Needless to say, the apps arrival in BlackBerry World will surely please BlackBerry 10 users. The app has been built using native tools and will tap directly into the BlackBerry accounts services as well as the sharing menu system so users can easily access and share items from wherever they are in the operating system.

We're live at BlackBerry Jam Asia right now, so we'll be looking to get a hands-on video and some images of the app as soon as possible for everyone. Until then, stay tuned and see what else in store for Jam Asia.

Sina Weibo to launch native app for BlackBerry 10

It does make me thinking, how was the smartphone revolution came to be in china, before touch screen revolutions. I mean blackberrys were the first of smartphones, where keyboards were all alphabets. Now in china they use chinese letters and there must be hundreds. Did all the non alphabet using societies skip out on smartphone early revolution until touchscreens came about?

They have various input method which construct chinese character based on different combination of letters. The latest and most popular is "pinyin" input which uses alphabets to spell out the characters based on how it is sound.

BlackBerry smartphones were mainly used by foreign companies; local companies rarely used BlackBerrys at work. Nokia keypad phones (not smartphones) were really popular in China.

I remember reading a local BlackBerry advertisement while there, it showed featured Torched 9800 which said, "First BlackBerry with [Chinese] handwriting input !".

Folks holding the iPhones and the Android smartphones (Android was starting to take off back then) were bemused; they had for *YEARS* handwriting input for iPhones and Android phones.

BlackBerry was so out of the market that their local BlackBerry sales offices did not realize this irony.

And BlackBerry one-up itself by launching the Bold 9900 touchscreen phone--and *with*No* Handwriting Input (yes, a touchscreen with no handwriting input???).
A friend of mine went from the Bold 9000 to an iPhone because the Bold 9900 did not have handwriting input, and have never looked back :(

For Chinese language, there are two ways of typing it out in non-smartphones. It's the same way as smartphones actually.

The first would be in typing each character out using alphabets (Han Yu Pin Yin) then choose the desired character from the list Chinese characters with the same pronunciation.

I'm not really familiar with the second way as I don't use it. If I'm not wrong besides the usal A-Z markings on the keypad, there's another set of special characters marked above it and it you can select the characters to form the pronunciation of the Chinese character where you can then select the character you want from a list.

But there is a large diaspora living in countries where blackberry is big. So if you're in Indonesia, and you're Chinese, you may want that awesome bb that everyone else wants...and it's awesome that you can keep in touch with what your friends back home are talking about....

Trend in China isn't controlled by ppl buy cheap ass phones, it is controlled by whoever buy anything that's luxurious :) BB should push the Posche, LV design BB in China with premium material design, and extra security features and team up with local tech giants to get all top apps included.

oh, and most importantly, please get the input method API opened up to get proper Pinyin input and handwriting on there. I know these are included in stock, but both are very basic and suck in many ways.

It finally came.
BlackBerry company has bad operations here in china.Indeed,there are lots of people who stick to blackberry for a long time.but they give BlackBerry up when seeing there are no enough local native apps like QQ,Wechat(these two apps are key factors determing one's decision to buy a blackberry).many would go back to BlackBerry if they have enough Native apps.

So lots of fans feel sad as stupid BlackBerry even didn't pay attention to the Chinese Market.seeing Apple's big success?seeing Android's success?no,BB never sees this because she's blind

My wife would buy a BlackBerry in a minute if it had QQ. Because it doesn't, she is seriously looking at an Apple i5 phone. There are many Chinese Canadians who would be on a BlackBerry if QQ was available for BB10.

I'd be interested to see how character input varies between platforms in in languages based on characters like Chinese. Is there an advantage to having a keyboard phone, or is it more convenient to use the touchscreen? How is the swiping experience of the Z10 in these languages? I there's obviously large potential there. I hope they start taking the Asian markets more seriously sooner rather than later.

I do not have knowledge on how it works on iOS and Android (especially HTC and Huawei ?). But here is what BlackBerry 10 handles simplified Chinese input: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euRqXNYdUiE
I was amazed when I saw the video.

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